


(We don’t get a say on this island,) We don’t have to stay on this island

by 3x3



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Despair (Dangan Ronpa), M/M, ft. local cryptid kamukura izuru
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:54:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26135329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3x3/pseuds/3x3
Summary: There’s a rumor of a ghost in the old school building. And Naegi isn’t usually the type to engage in supernatural investigations, but well, this one seems to have picked up a game of fetch with him. So who can blame him for being intrigued?Kamuegi week day 3: non-despair AU
Relationships: Kamukura Izuru/Naegi Makoto
Comments: 11
Kudos: 136
Collections: Kamuegi Week 2020





	(We don’t get a say on this island,) We don’t have to stay on this island

**Author's Note:**

> It's almost 1pm here so I'm tossing this out.

The first time Naegi sees him, he doesn’t actually _see_ him.

He is being sent to retrieve an out-of-bounds ball that skittered off to the old school building. The old school building that was off-limits. Yes, _that_ building.

And he thinks about the rumors.

The old school building is prohibited from all students and most of the school faculty. There are those yellow tapes you’d see in crime shows loosely crossing the doors. No one has ever seen anyone enter or exit the building, but strange noise came from it sometimes, and there have been multiple sightings of an unknown silhouette residing by the windows. _It’s the vengeful spirit of a dead student,_ they say, _Victim of human experimentation,_ they say. 

That’s enough to keep Naegi away.

However, ball-retrieving-duty is not to be taken lightly, especially for high school boys, who usually only share a singular ball because no one wants to spend the extra money for a backup ball. The success of this mission is crucial if they want to carry on with this pleasant afternoon whilst entertained.

And if the ball flew into the window of the old school building, to the old school building Naegi must go.

A quick step back.

When he was younger, Naegi didn’t have any problems with the supernatural. Or rather, he didn’t give them much thought either way. It was a genre that was scarce in the Naegi household, where the most supernatural-esque movie was _Spirited Away._

Then Komaru turned twelve and got invested in all kinds of spirit-related media. As a standard older brother, he would sometimes hear of said media, usually in the form of loud wailing or unintelligible blubbering, and occasionally, watch horror movies with her.

It was admittedly one of the poorer decisions he’d made in his life, maybe if he’d been a worse brother, he wouldn’t be stuck in such a situation. But as things were, he was now stuck with a mild case of paranoia and slight phasmophobia.

Cut back to the present. Naegi approaches the establishment wearily. The window is broken, glass shards splatter on the ground. Great. Hopefully the school administrators don't catch onto this. Now, is it possible to reach the ball with his arm without having to actually enter the building? If he were fast enough, maybe he wouldn’t trigger any paranormal activities, rumors or not.

He peers into the interiors. The room looks pitch dark. _Don’t think about ghosts, don’t think about ghosts, don’t think about ghosts._ He takes a deep breath and reaches.

A shadow. _Ghost!_

He freezes, bracing the worst.

The ball shoots out. It lands in his hands with a plop.

Out of pure reflex, he says, “Thank you.” and gives a half-bow.

When he jogs back to the others on the field, Naegi thinks, _Maybe it’s a nice ghost._

The next day, he ventures back over to the old school building and carefully leaves a box of _kusamochi_ on the windowsill, and hopes that the nice ghost doesn't mind that the _sakuramochi_ from the same gift packet has been eaten by Komaru already.

The day after that, a familiar empty container is found on his desk first thing in the morning.

* * *

And the thing is, that first time is like a trigger or the flip of a switch, because suddenly Naegi is always coming back to the old school building. It seems like the school really doesn't notice the broken window, because it lies there unfixed, creating more chances for Naegi's butterfingers to act out.

His printouts would flutter, or his shoe would go sailing overhead, or a frog would escape out from his grasp on his way back to the biology lab because he is somehow always responsible for animal-wrangling.

Yet the printouts stack back into his hands neatly, his shoe lands just a fist away from his sock foot, the frog leaps onto his right shoulder gracefully.

Naegi sees a tuft of black, inky tendrils disappear around the corner, and almost strangely, he feels amused.

“There’s a Tangela in the old school building.” he says to Maizono- _san_ , who blinks at him slowly and pauses midway-sip of her tea.

“As in, the pokemon?” She asks, “I thought you didn’t like going near there.”

“I don’t.” he replies, and even though he is used to sharing everything with her, he wants to keep this to himself just for once. A secret between him and the nice ghost.

Maizono- _san_ smiles, in the way that’s a little bit confused but mostly fond. “I see that you’re trying to befriend the school ghost.” she jokes, and her intuition is scarily accurate as usual.

_Befriending the school ghost._ Naegi thinks. He doesn’t know about befriending, but he thinks he and the school ghost are on pretty good terms.

He brings a packet of dried kelp to the windowsill, and hopes the ghost doesn’t feel offended by the appearance the food bears. He writes a post-it note and sticks it right on top. _Is there any food that you like or dislike?_ He leaves a pen there as well, just in case the ghost doesn’t have a pen.

His lingering questions of whether ghosts can touch inanimate objects or not gets resolved that afternoon, when the same post-it note alongside his pen falls back onto his desk, with the word _No._ written beneath his initial question in a handwriting that looks very printed, and the fact that the ghost uses proper punctuation makes Naegi laugh.

Maizono- _san_ peers over from her seat next to him. “Is that from the Tangela in the old school building?” she asks.

From across the aisle, Togami- _kun_ sneers dismissively. “As usual, your conversations bear no intellectual worth.”

Intellectual worth? Possibly not. But there is a lot of emotional worth there.

He thinks the ghost is slowly warming up to him. Over the next few run-ins, he’s caught sight of a black suit that looks suspiciously like their Reserve Course jacket and a pair of startling red eyes. _Trust-building._ He thinks to himself victoriously.

“Are you keeping a cat out there somewhere?” asks Komaru when she catches him stuffing a bag of homemade cookies into his backpack.

“Do cats eat cookies?” he retorts.

Komaru shrugs.

On his way to school, he muses that it _is_ like keeping a cat. An overgrown, terribly flighty cat.

* * *

Kibougamine Gakuen is not the shining pillar of goodness that the media paints it as. There are lots of problems with the school, that’s for sure. And one of the many many flaws, is the Reserve Course Program.

Students that were not scouted for their talent can enter the school by paying a large sum of tuition fee. Because of course it’s money, when _isn’t_ it money? But despite the money, Reserve Course students would never be able to receive the same kind of education that the Main Course students have, and are often scorned upon as lesser beings. This results in Reserve Course students generally not having very high self-esteem, and growing to feel resentment towards their gifted peers.

He thinks about the Reserve Course student uniform, and thinks about the word _ghost_. When he leaves a case of pretzels on the windowsill, he hopes that it wasn’t a sad story- _please don’t be a sad story._ But he supposes that news this big would’ve made the headlines, so maybe it hadn’t been a sad story.

Then again, any story that involved the makings of a ghost would be a sad story.

On the flip side, Naegi has never actually confirmed the ghost theory either. The nice ghost could very much just be a mysterious Reserve Course student that happens to be a regular rule-breaker, which well yes, he has several classmates like that, but he's never known Reserve Course students like that.

Or maybe he's just never known Reserve Course students.

Naegi wants to know the nice ghost though- _may not be a ghost-_ he reminds himself again. And really, the only reliable source would be from, well, the source.

* * *

The first time Naegi sees him, _actually sees him with his own eyes,_ it is near dusk. The sun is setting, and it spills a rich orange color onto everything it touches.

He enters the old school building for the first time, from the creaky, rusted door. He tears down the yellow tape and pushes forward.

"Hi, excuse me." Naegi calls into a seemingly empty corridor. "Are you a ghost?"

"No."

The voice sounds higher than he expected. Its volume is soft though, and Naegi has to strain his ears to listen.

It's from somewhere down the hall.

“Oh. Then how did you know where my desk is?” He blurts. He doesn’t mean for it to sound overly accusatory, but that was honestly the very first thought that popped into his mind.

"It's very easy to find information in this school. Predictable. Boring."

To the right.

"Okay." Naegi says, though that doesn't really explain knowing where his desk is. Unless desk arrangements by drawing lots are predictable by some bizarre logic. He decides not to dwell on that.

"My name is Naegi Makoto." He introduces himself. "What's yours?"

Hesitation. Then, "Kamukura Izuru."

Naegi stops in front of a door. This is the room. This is where that ball first landed.

"It's nice to meet you, Kamukura…- _kun_?"

He twists open the doorknob, and sees Kamukura Izuru.

Broad shoulders and a tall, steady build fills the Reserve Course uniform nicely. There is an evening breeze blowing through the broken window, spilling dark, heavy locks into a borderless storm.

Nod of confirmation. Kamukura- _kun_ is mesmerizing with how he moves his body. He is smooth actions and an otherworldly grace, unlike Naegi, who has two left feet and an oversized meat suit over hyperactive bones. Kamukura- _kun_ is a breathtaking view cloaked in twilight, and Naegi gapes abashedly.

"Do you ever leave this room?" Because this is the room Naegi first finds him in. This is the room he's come to associate with him. This is where he's finding him now.

Kamukura- _kun_ is bare in motion. When he opens his mouth, Naegi can't help but marvel how clean and concise he makes himself. "Yes. How else would I be able to return your possessions onto your desk?"

Naegi shrugs, fumbles with his thoughts a little, because he is always bursting with excessive energy. "Oh, it's just, I've never seen you anywhere else."

"People are usually not hard to evade."

While that statement is true for someone like Naegi, he can't imagine how it applies for someone with features as outstanding as Kamukura- _kun_ 's.

“I am not confined to this place, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Okay.” Naegi says. “Why do you always seem like you’re here, then?”

“There’s nothing outside. Everything is pointless.”

_A nihilist?_ “Well, I would argue that there’s nothing _inside_ either.” Naegi replies. “Can you say you’ve really seen everything outside? _Everything_?”

“Predictable. Everything works under a certain pattern. Meticulous. Dull.”

And maybe to an extent, Naegi can see where he’s coming from. He is not as intelligent as most of his classmates, and if Kamukura- _kun_ were like them, then it’s no wonder he’d find the world easy to navigate-“But certainly the world is much wider than you think!” Naegi argues. “I’ve never even seen the ocean, for example, even though we live in a country completely surrounded by water. Have you ever seen the ocean, Kamukura- _kun_?”

Kamukura- _kun_ seems to hesitate upon that question. “Not in person.”

“Then you see, there’s a whole world out there that you haven’t seen yet. And neither have I!”

“That doesn’t mean it’s not all still predictable.” Kamukura- _kun_ says stubbornly. “Everything is predictable.”

“So you stay here all day and do nothing?” Naegi shakes his head, finally starting to piece together his thoughts. He works best this way: stringing separate parts into a full picture as he advances. “I don’t think that’s the case. If everything really _is_ predictable, then why reveal yourself to me now? Why keep interacting with me? Why did you retrieve our ball in the first place?” And it’s something that’s never occurred to him before he voices it out loud. But now that he’s said it, he feels rather confident about his deduction. Maybe Kirigiri- _san_ has been rubbing off of him.

Then Kamukura- _kun_ is silent. Naegi wonders if he has an answer to the question. He wonders if Kamukura- _kun_ is finding an answer as well.

“Do I bore you, Kamukura- _kun_?” he asks.

A contemplative head tilt. It’s the first time in this audience that Naegi has seen him show an unnecessary physical cue.

“No.”

He lets out an involuntary exhale of relief in secret.

“Well, I am very ordinary. And if I don’t bore you, surely there are lots more outside that would intrigue you if you gave them a chance.”

And this feels like a big moment. A Big Moment with capital letters. Naegi extends a hand, and feels so significant in this moment. _Come with me._ He thinks. There is so much about Kamukura- _kun_ that is a mystery, and he does not look like the type to share easily at all, but Naegi wants to know anyway. He wants to know, and he hopes that in time, he will get to know.

An agonizing moment passes, before Kamukura- _kun_ slips his hand in Naegi’s. He doesn’t phase through. He is solid. His skin is a little colder than average, but he is undoubtedly, painfully alive. He has a strong grip, and Naegi can feel the bumps of his joints jutting out angularly. It feels like holding a bomb, or a glass ornament.

“Naegi Makoto,” he announces solemnly. “You are anything but ordinary.”

The way he says it sounds like a vow.

**Author's Note:**

>  ~~and then they went to the beach~~  
>  so i couldn't find that one picture of class 78's seating so i said whatever and went with what i wanted  
> Find my kamuegi week notes [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/168GPwwj5c9ALKh9_CiXTCeg6rcDs31yYKbbTv1GKSp4/edit?usp=sharing)!!  
> and for more of my writing, join me on my writing blog [here](https://aechteaseawb.tumblr.com/)


End file.
